2 weeks out, new week, new goals

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     Today I woke up pumped! Early morning at the gym with Brandon. It's Sunday. Leg Day. And only 2 weeks left in the Fall Transformation Challenge. Call me crazy but I love leg day and I love doing squats. I love the challenge of seeing how many reps I can do and lately,  I love seeing how much weight I can squat. Last week was a 100 rep day. Doing 25 rep sets Brandon kept the weight reasonable. Today he told me we were going to do shorter sets and more weight. My personal goal is to get up to 135 (two 45 lb plates) before the holidays. Totally doable according to Brandon. My personal record before today has been 80 lbs for 16 reps. So today I was anxious to see what I could do. In fact today is a day of new goals for the new week. Brandon and I have been talking for the last 2 days about changing up the meal plan and start carb cycling (no carbs every other day) and making sure I do HIIT cardio (High Intensity Interval Training) every day we train. Doing these things will help me drop more weight between now and the end of the challenge. Winning the challenge would be awesome (but I have no idea how everyone is doing and how many people in the challenge are crushing their goals). And although it would be nice to win and be recognized (not to mention the free year at the gym) I am starting to look beyond the challenge to new goals. I told my husband and Brandon that I am not done until I can see my abs. I want to be tone, cut and in the best shape of my life before I say I am satisfied.

     Normally, (at least since the challenge started) I would weigh-in today since it is a 2 week check-in. Today is 8 weeks in the challenge. But I got to the gym early and did cardio before Brandon and I started leg day and just totally forgot to weigh myself. About halfway through the workout as I was lunging towards the scale in a quad extension/lunge superset it suddenly dawned on me that I never weighed in. Brandon was like 'No problem. Just do it next week.' And added that by next week I will have been carb cycling for a week so I should see a difference. So I will weigh in next week and see how much the carb cycling and HIIT cardio affect my success. Getting on the scale is not a necessary a thing for me. It doesn't mean as much to me as the gains I feel from working out; more energy, clarity of focus and overall wellness and strength. 

     So today we started the workout with squats warming up with the bar first and then adding weight in sets of 12 reps. One set with just the bar (45 lbs), one set with 10's (65 lbs total), one set with two 10's (85 lbs total), and one set with three 10's (105 lbs). A new personal record (PR) and only 30 lbs from my goal! I was so pumped after that part of the workout the rest seemed so easy. Realizing I hadn't weighed in didn't matter in my mind because at that point I had already made other gains. So as I look ahead at the coming weeks and months I have new goals; to squat 135 lbs, to learn more about nutrition and how it affects what the body can do and to continue to enjoy the journey I am on by pushing myself beyond what I think I can do.